Results

NEW: Beta-release of our interactive density maps!

Patience Grasshopper…sometimes these maps take a few seconds to load.

Here are some initial views of our density maps that can be explored interactively. We’re working on the display-settings, and we’re very happy to have feedback. Tell us what you think (be nice please 🙂 ).

Please read the details below. These predictions are most accurate at the broad scale (city-wide), but they still provide interesting approximate estimates when you zoom in to a particular neighbourhood. Have fun!

A huge Thank-You goes out to Genevieve Perkins: she’s the volunteer who has been building these interactive versions of our density maps. Thanks Gen!

These maps show the predicted density of bird species across Ottawa (birds/ hectare). You can overlay multiple species (although it gets more difficult to see details), or flip through each species in turn. Click the check-box beside each species’ name to turn the species density on or off.

Please Note: these predictions provide an estimate of the average density of each species, during the peak of the breeding season (~late May – early July). They are best viewed at a broad scale (city-wide), but you can get a general idea of density in any area of the city by zooming in. In general, remember that these predictions are most accurate at the city-wide scale, but they may not be as accurate for your backyard :-). As you zoom in, the predictions will be less precise and may be more or less accurate depending on how similar that particular area is to the surrounding neighbourhood (e.g., don’t expect a lot of American Robins in the middle of the road, or a parking lot, but you can expect these predictions to work well for the lawns and trees around the road). These surfaces were generated using data from the OBC point count program, a habitat base-map, a statistical analysis, and some geo-spatial interpolation techniques. One final caveat: these predictions were produced from data collected in the early years of the Ottawa Bird Count (pre-2011), so they will not work for any areas of the city that have changed (e.g., been developed) since then. Although in these situations, these predictions provide an interesting view of what birds were there before the development…

Population Estimates

How many birds nest in Ottawa?

The points for each species on this graph represent our best estimate of the population size for each of the 73 most common bird species in the city of Ottawa. More detail on the estimates (and the estimates themselves) can be found below.

Population Estimates

This excel spreadsheet lists the estimated population sizes for the 73 most common bird species in our study area.

These estimates are derived from a statistical model that relates the bird observations from our point count program to a habitat/landcover map of the study area, (while controlling for different observers, traffic noise, the time of day, and the day of the season). Using the relationships between the bird observations and the habitat at our point count locations, we can then estimate the total number of birds in the entire study area. The upper and lower limits to the estimates represent the outer bounds on the estimates (one reasonable interpretation is to think of the true population being somewhere between the upper and lower limit, and the estimated population size is our best estimate).

Overview presentation

Ottawa Bird Count Presentation May 2014:

This presentation summarizes some of the results so far: occurrence of specific bird species, population estimates and the projected densities of certain birds.

Density maps from the point count program

We’re also working on a new interactive way to explore these maps, so stay-tuned.

Full Point Count Program Database

If you’re statistically skilled, you might want to explore our point count database. You can download the full database in this .csv file OBC_Full_PointCount_database_16_Mar_2019 (which you can view using excel or any other spreadsheet reader). We’d love to hear what you discover or what you do with it.

Please be aware this is an un-filtered database, it may include errors